What a Quandary!

Quandary: a state of perplexity or uncertainty, especially as to what to do; dilemma. From Dictionary.com

A fitting word and tangle to describe the past week for me. No matter which way I turned, I was confronted with another quandary as I tried to meet a big deadline. By Friday, my shoulders felt as though they were touching my ears from the stress. Time to tangle and see if I could relax a little.

I haven’t done the Diva Challenge in a while, so I thought it would be nice to work on the latest from Laura Harms. Quandary again! This time it was in the form of the new tangle, Quandary, from Zentangle. As I tackled Quandary in my Tangle-A-Day calendar, I quickly understood how it came to be named. It reminded me of another tangle, Tripoli, which has always been a struggle for me. With Quandary, your eye bounces back and forth with the need to create the triangles and the flowers that emerge as you build the triangles. I got lost several times with less than stellar results. For me, it seems the secret is in the scale. I do much better with the larger scale. I tell my students all the time to play with scale when learning a tangle that they seem to struggle to master but sometimes forget to do this myself. With my new awareness, it may be time to try Tripoli and Assunta, but much larger in scale.

I also took some time to “finish” a few things. When teaching, as I did last weekend, I often start a tile or demo a tangle on one and move on. What’s left is a pile of really random tiles, some with only a tangle and no strings, others resembling most of the tiles I do in a basic class since I keep the string and tangles fairly simple. These are a challenge to complete and I’ll tackle a few from time to time just to see what I can do with them. While working on my Diva Challenge, I realized a previous page in my calendar had never been shaded so I thought it might be interesting to share the before and after on my blog. Shading really is a personal preference and there are tangles that I never shade, and others that change dramatically with a little bit of pencil strategically applied. To really learn more about shading, take a look at Made in the Shade by Cris Letourneau. Cris earned her CZT along with me in 2011. This book is a deep dive into the world of shading specific to Zentangle and is well worth the investment. You can see more of Cris’ work here.

Give Quandary a try and I hope you enjoy the fruits of my various dilemmas.